


Blood On The Wings

by HollowMachines



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Tragedy, playing fast and loose with historical accuracy, vague POW camp references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23320510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollowMachines/pseuds/HollowMachines
Summary: I'm so far from home, not where I belongOut here in the darkness and out of the light
Relationships: Collins/Farrier (Dunkirk)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: song prompt





	Blood On The Wings

**Author's Note:**

> So this song really just created such a vividly tragic image in my head.  
> The musical inspiration was _Far From Home _by Sam Tinnesz__ ([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y4Sz8_Oq1M))

It’s been nine months since Farrier last saw home.

The months roll over into each other, announcing each new day with a steep plummet in temperature. The stove does little to keep the barracks warm, even with so many men packed in. A few of the windows had been damaged earlier in autumn too, patched up only with the remains of cardboard from Red Cross parcels, so they do even less against the whistling winds of winter’s tightening grip.

Lounging on his bunk, his stomach makes its usual nightly protests, begging for more than the rationed bits the goons have been giving them lately. He ignores it, sucking in another lungful of cigarette smoke instead. Staring up at the chipped paint of the ceiling with his arms tucked tight around his slowly emaciating body, he thinks on what to write on the blank page wrinkled in his hand, flicking the pencil between his fingers while tuning out the voices of the other men in the room.

Farrier had managed to get a few letters out since landing himself in here. A couple to his mother back home, but mostly to the base. To Collins, specifically. He’s never been much for writing - he’s not overly vocal with his feelings or inclined to regale with stories - but it would have been cruel not to try. He’d half expected his letter to be mysteriously lost or burned by the guards or the Kommandant himself. Worst case his letter would be nothing but a signal sent out into the void, never received or never answered.

In all honesty, the day he was delivered return mail it lifted something heavy from his soul, even added a bit of glimmer to his eyes despite everything.

He wasn’t forgotten out here, lost somewhere amidst all the names and numbers. Collins was out there somewhere on the other side of the Channel, still fighting, still surviving. 

It was like he’d been holding his breath, and seeing Collins’ swirling handwriting finally unlocked his lungs. In the corner of the page is a small inked sketch of a black bird. A raven, specifically; a reminiscence of some old conversation Farrier can only half remember now. Even so the silly little drawing is familiar and warming all the same. He finds it on every letter he receives.

Collins never asks about Dunkirk.

Instead he talks about his missions, the squadron, his promotion to Flying Officer in September. There’s a number of redacted lines, but mostly he gives Farrier all the gruelling details with regards to the air war back home over the summer, even recalling his shooting down of a bomber on one occasion, and his bail out over Kent that had landed him practically in some well-to-do family’s backyard on another. He mentions his sister has joined the WAAF up north as a wireless operator, and asks after Farrier’s mother, making sure he’s bothered to get word to her.

He mentions the squadron’s mascot, a runty little border collie named Magpie, still begs for scraps from the CO and yips at the scramble bell when it rings. They’ve given her a robust set of I.D. tags of her own, which she gnaws at if she can get them free.

During a quiet day in August they’d held a cricket tournament between the pilots and the ground crew. It had been interrupted prematurely by a call to scramble so no one was declared the victor, and a few hours later they'd come back a man short. _A bleak outlook on the war_ , Collins had mused then tried to cross out, but Farrier could still barely read it.

If Collins talks about the squadron and a name never comes up, he doesn’t mention why. Farrier never asks after anyone, either. He’d rather not know, for now. It’s bad enough he’s tied his heart to Collins, fearing the day the letters stop coming, anxiety creeping in the longer he goes without.

But Collins writes persistently, so much so Farrier can’t keep up the return between the work shifts and short hours of much needed sleep. All of Collins’ letters are long and detailed, sometimes obviously written in haste and messily scribbled over, but regardless, Farrier can’t help but smile as he reads over the words again and again, night after night. He can just about hear Collins’ smooth Scots accent in every line of ink.

It adds to the homesickness. Every time Farrier finds himself yearning, stroking a thumb over the swooping curves of Collins’ signature and re-reading the same closing lines.

_"I’m glad you’re alright. Stay safe."_

He knows what Collins wants to say but can’t.

_Come back to me. Come home._

Some of the other men in the block have pestered him about it before, whenever they catch his usually stoic expression turned soft with longing.

“Another letter from your girl?” Or words to that effect.

Farrier never let them see, only chuckling knowingly and responding with, “Something like that.”

He rarely says much else to them.

It’s been harder for him to write back to Collins. He doesn’t know how interesting it is to write about the mud and the cold, the work, the dismal huts with scratchy beds and leaking panels and creaking floorboards. The smell of sweat and rarely washed clothes. Farrier is careful not to hint at his lacking diet, his weakened muscles, or his hair which has grown longer and greasier than he’d like. None of which are things he wants to worry Collins with.

Certainly he doesn’t mention that two of the men in the camp who’d been here before him - Norwegians, he thinks - were shot trying to escape just three weeks after his arrival. It had quieted the camp for a few days and increased the guard watches, but soon enough whispers of escape were everywhere again. He only bothers listening in if the idea sounded like it is worth the effort. Most aren't. 

He isn't desperate enough to risk his life recklessly, no matter how much he wants to go home. That being said, the current plan in the works sounds promising, and with every step closer to its implementation, he starts to imagine what it'll be like hiking his way across Europe, finding a way home, eventually strolling back onto base like nothing happened. Seeing his mother and the boys and _Collins_ again.

He makes the mistake once in a letter of mentioning his interrogation by the Kommandant when he’d first arrived. He’d walked out with bruises across his face and a cracked lip, battered ribs, a torn knee. His fingers had been cracked along the knuckles but had healed since then, though not perfectly straight. His knee was still weak, too, easily jerked out of place if he stepped wrong or it would throb horribly if he stood too long.

When Collins had expressed his concern, Farrier wrote back,

_"I can still fly. I’ll make due with that."_

He misses flying more and more every day. The ground isn't made for him anymore; it hasn't been for a long time. It's another kind of torture having the huge expanse of open sky above his head, and not being able to touch it.

At least he hasn’t ended up in an isolation cell, yet. He’s seen some of the men who’ve done some time there, and he’s heard the stories of others. Some come out the other side the same as before, some don’t. It’s incredible and terrifying to think what silence and seclusion can do to a man, given enough time. Then again, all a man really needs to lose himself is time; an unstoppable, cruel enemy.

 _"I don’t belong here_ ," he writes in his current letter.

Sinking into his bunk, the words come by candlelight as the night drags on, the air biting and bitterly cold. He’s not sure what sparks it, other than perhaps the grimness of his situation and a spike of desperation when he thinks about how so very far from home he is. Sentimentality burrows its way inside him, slowly chipping away at his walls.

His eyes flicker to the lower corner of the letter. Tucked carefully between his thumb and the paper is a photograph, yellowed and so worn at the creases he fears it will tear any day now.

In it Collins' youthful face stares back at him, his head angled towards the camera just over his shoulder. His hair has been swept up in the wind and his eyes are bright, a golden smile across his face caught between laughter. It’s the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen, like a ray of ethereal light trapped for eternity.

Farrier has kept it with him since it’s candid capture in late ‘39; he’s not even sure Collins knows about it himself. Bringing it out in this place always feels wrong, somehow, as if he’s tarnishing this precious thing just by exposing it to this darkness.

 _"Don’t forget about me,_ " he writes to close out the letter without taking his eyes off the photo.

He wishes Collins could hear him; wishes he could see him again, hold him again, kiss him again.

He doesn’t want to fade away here, like the man in the bunk across the way who goes vacant for hours at a time, or the man in the next barrack who startles at the slightest things, or the man a few beds down who wakes the block up screaming some nights. The casual day-to-day goings on and the men with chipper attitudes can’t dislodge the empty pit in his stomach.

He almost writes to Collins, " _I wish you were here."_

Then he remembers, scribbles that out, and writes, " _I wish I was home."_

 _With you,_ he doesn’t add.

He folds the letter up to be sent in the morning, shoving it under his pillow along with Collins' photo. Slumping down into his pillow, he tries not to remember what it felt like to have a warm body curled next to him in his bed, safely wrapped in his arms.

A couple weeks later, after fighting through a fever and a rugged cough that’s festered in his throat from a flu sweeping the camp, he finds a letter waiting on his pillow.

It’s not Collins’ handwriting, or even his mother's. It’s not familiar penmanship at all, in fact. 

The envelope is thicker than usual, and when Farrier picks it up, turning it over in his hands, he can feel something hard inside. Studying his own name written in foreign lettering, his heart sinks like a stone.

He considers burning it, initially. Skepticism has kept him safe enough, up until now. But instead his fingers strip the envelope apart, curiosity nagging at him, masking the dread coiling up like a snake inside him.

Farrier pulls out two letters, folded over each other, though one looks older and more worn than the other. From between the folds a small tag falls into his lap. He stares at it apprehensively.

It's an RAF I.D. disc, and his breath hitches at the name stamped into it.

_Jack Collins_

He flips the disc over between his fingers, staring blankly at it, trying to process; trying not to think too hard on its meaning.

Unfolding the first letter, the paper shudders in his hands as he begins to read.

_"Farrier, I'm a friend of Jack's. He asked me to send you this letter and his tag if he ever…"_

Farrier nearly drops the thing then and there. His stomach clenches like he's been kicked, breath leaving him all at once.

 _"As I write this, it’s been two weeks since he disappeared.”_ The note goes on _. “It was during a Channel hop. He's now been listed, 'Missing, Presumed Killed'. So there may be a chance, but… I felt it was better I sent this to you now, like he asked.”_

Farrier slumps, running a rough hand through his hair before dropping his head into his palm. He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to suck in air, but it's like breathing underwater.

_No, no, no. It's not possible, not him. Never him._

This isn't how it was supposed to go. He was going to escape, he was going to get home, and Collins was going to be there waiting for him.

The last lines from the nameless sender read, _“He wanted this letter sent to you. Told me he wrote it ages ago, just in case. Take care, and… I’m sorry.”_

Farrier crumples the paper and throws it to the floor. He doesn’t want an apology. He doesn’t even know this person.

The second letter still sits on the bed, staring back at him dauntingly. This one is from Collins, judging by the handwriting. Farrier glares bitterly at it. The small little raven is etched into the corner, but this one looks more like a cadaverous creature made of feathers and bones rather than a bird. Ink smears around the edges of the drawing like blood dripping from its wings. It makes him feel sick.

Curious eyes from across the room have drawn to him as he slowly unfolds the letter. He's light-headed suddenly, blood pounding like drums in his ears. Swallowing dryly, he forces himself not to scan the page, reading every word from start to finish carefully.

" _Farrier, if you're reading this, then I suppose my luck's finally run out. The war's really picked up here the last few months, so... I'm writing this just in case we never see each other again."_

He can't do this.

There's obvious hesitation in Collins' scrawl, and something tells him this letter is the final result of many failed attempts.

The I.D. disc flips between the fingers of Farrier's free hand absently, crushed occasionally in his palm when his frustration flares to the surface. It's just one part of a slew of emotions swelling inside him like a hurricane. Rubbing at his blurring vision to clear the spots, he forces himself on.

He has to keep going; he has to know.

" _I owe you so much, and I don't want to leave anything unsaid. So if I don't come back, and you get home too late, I just want you to know… I tried. I really did. I flew and fought the best that I could. I always took a bit of you to the air with me."_

Pride pokes at his defences briefly, so much he almost smiles, but it's too difficult, and it fades fast.

_"I can't describe to you how it felt watching you disappear that day, or how it felt finding out you were still alive._

_Y_ _ou mean the world to me._ _There's a lot of things I should have said, but never could. Our situation wasn't exactly ideal, I know, so I was willing to make what we could of it. I never told you this, but I was going to ask you to move back to Scotland with me after the war. Find some place quiet to settle down, just the two of us."_

A knife to the stomach would be kinder than this.

_"I'm sorry I didn't say it to you before, and I can't say it to you now. But just know…_

_I did love you. I_ _do_ _love you. Always have, always will. What we had meant everything. I never forgot you, not once."_

Farrier drops his head into his hands, letter open on his knees, the words glaring up at him in silent torture. A teardrop hits the paper, threatening to blur the ink, and he wipes at it frantically.

He can't lose these precious words.

_"I'm sorry I couldn't hold out. I won't be there waiting for you._

_Please do me one last favour. Whenever this war ends, you come home and you live your best life, yeah? You're strong enough, I know you'll come out of this, and you've got to keep moving forward, you understand? My folks and my sister did always want to meet you._

_Just… don't forget about me."_

Like he ever could.

He's nearly at the end, and Farrier freezes with his eyes somewhere in the spaces between the letters. If he keeps reading, it's over. The last words he's going to have from Collins. There aren't supposed to be last words.

_"I love you, Tom. I'm sorry we couldn't have more time._

_Stay safe, and promise me you'll come home."_

Farrier chokes on the sob pushing up past his lips. He digs out Collins' photo from under his pillow, and that beautiful face staring back at him pangs like a spike to the chest. The letter falls loose from his fingers, floating to the floor like a feather. He grips the tag and the photo together hard enough his fingers whiten and shake.

_Missing Presumed Killed._

The words echo around his head, ricocheting shrapnel piercing every inch of him.

 _They don't even know_ , his thoughts wail. _They don't even have a body. He's just gone. Lost in this damn madness._

He presses his lips to Collins' photo, begging one last kiss. Tears flow over as he closes his eyes, rocking in his bunk, shuddering with each breath.

They’d never said those words to each other. Farrier spoke with actions, subtle touches and sparse words of encouragement, but Collins had always been more direct, more vocal, more soulful. Of course he would find a way, in the end.

Damn his stubbornness. He should have said it from the beginning; Collins deserved so much more than this.

_You must have known - I pray to God you knew - but now I can never say it._

In a while he may start screaming, or throwing fists at the wall until his knuckles are bloody. Maybe he'll get himself thrown into isolation just for the chance at peaceful oblivion. He wants to batter his way through all of Germany single-handed.

But right now he's just too damn tired to feel anything.

 _Come home_ , Collins had said. Farrier was supposed to come home to him. He's never felt so far away in his life.

_The Hell am I supposed to do now?_

No one else in the room says a word watching Farrier crumble dejectedly into his bed, though their faces are sympathetic.

It's easy to tell when a man's lost a part of himself to this war.

**Author's Note:**

> Once again I started with a different song, but then this came on and my mind flung itself straight back into Hell. Honestly this idea has been subtly floating around my head for a while, coming about after reflecting on the fact that, statistically speaking, Farrier is more likely to survive the war as a POW than Collins is as an active pilot.  
> (Someone force me to write something happy for once.)
> 
> Upside is, "Missing Presumed Killed/Dead" was used when pilot's were thought to be dead but there was no confirmation, i.e. no body, eyewitnesses, etc...  
> So in some cases (depending on where they went down) pilots were later found alive in POW camps, having joined resistance groups, or having managed to get themselves back home, so... he could still, possibly, be alive?


End file.
